JEMR Webinar | Where Attention Meets the Decision
the chair
3rd Journal of Eye Movement Research (JEMR) Webinar
Where Attention Meets the Decision
Welcome to the third and final webinar accompanying the Special Issue "Eye Tracking in the Age of AI: Explainability, Prediction, and Applications", published in the Journal of Eye Movement Research.
The series has followed a single line of questioning. The first webinar asked what a score from a predictive model actually means. The second asked where prediction holds and where it stops. This session takes the third pillar of the Special Issue, applications, and asks what eye tracking contributes when a real decision depends on it: which advertisement to run, which package to put on the shelf.
The two talks approach that question from opposite ends.
The first presentation (Prof. Michel Wedel) shows how deep learning can now predict where viewers will look in a video advertisement, frame by frame, accounting for scene cuts, meaning and sound. At a time when short video advertising is produced in volumes no laboratory could test, this brings attention research to the scale at which creative decisions are actually made.
The second presentation (Dr. Hedda Martina Šola) returns to the human at the moment of choice. It reports a study in which consumers were recorded while viewing branded food packaging with and without a bio-label, and compares what they looked at with what they said mattered to them. The two did not always coincide.
Taken together, the talks show both sides of applied eye tracking today: the reach that prediction now offers, and the evidence that only measurement on people can still provide.
This Special Issue was opened to bring such work into the literature, including applied studies in consumer research, health, education, design and human-computer interaction, and research on robustness and generalisability across contexts. Submissions remain open until 20 November 2026. I look forward to the discussion.
Dr. Hedda Martina Šola
Guest Editor and Chair
Date: 17 November 2026
Time: 16:00 CET | 10:00 EST
Webinar ID: 810 4960 8957
Webinar Secretariat: journal.webinar@mdpi.com
Flyers
- JEMR_Webinar_poster.pdf
Meet Our Chair
Institute for Neuromarketing & Intellectual Property, Zagreb, Croatia ;Dr. Hedda Martina Šola is Director of the Institute for Neuromarketing and Intellectual Property in Zagreb, a research institution that measures and predicts consumer behaviour using high-end neuroscientific technology and its own proprietary protocols. She holds a PhD in Economics with a specialisation in neuromarketing and brings more than thirty years in strategic marketing and over fifteen in consumer neuroscience, research and higher education, including Vice Dean and doctoral teaching appointments and five years at Oxford Business College. For over eleven years she has served as a registered permanent court expert in marketing and in the valuation of intellectual property rights across the European Union. She is the author of more than forty publications, the holder of numerous awards and recognitions for her work and her contribution to science, and Guest Editor of this Special Issue.
Meet Our Speakers
Institute for Neuromarketing & Intellectual Property, Zagreb Croatia;Dr. Hedda Martina Šola is Director of the Institute for Neuromarketing and Intellectual Property in Zagreb, a research institution that measures and predicts consumer behaviour using high-end neuroscientific technology and its own proprietary protocols. She holds a PhD in Economics with a specialisation in neuromarketing and brings more than thirty years in strategic marketing and over fifteen in consumer neuroscience, research and higher education, including Vice Dean and doctoral teaching appointments and five years at Oxford Business College. For over eleven years she has served as a registered permanent court expert in marketing and in the valuation of intellectual property rights across the European Union. She is the author of more than forty publications, the holder of numerous awards and recognitions for her work and her contribution to science, and Guest Editor of this Special Issue.
Prof. Michel Wedel
Department of Marketing, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, USA;Michel Wedel is the PepsiCo Chaired Professor of Consumer Science at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, and a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. Wedel studies consumer behavior and marketing decision making through the development and application of statistical, econometric, psychometric, and machine learning methods. Much of his recent work addresses problems in visual marketing using eye tracking. He has published three books, eight software packages, almost 200 peer-reviewed articles, and 25 book chapters. His work has been cited over 40,000 times on Google Scholar with an H-index of 94. Wedel has received the Muller award for outstanding contributions to the social sciences from the Royal Dutch Academy of the Sciences, the Churchill, Parlin, Lavidge, Converse, and McGraw-Hill awards for lifetime contributions from the American Marketing Association, and the Weaver award for lifetime achievements from INFORMS. He has received several best paper awards, including the O’Dell, Root, and Lehmann awards. The University of Groningen in the Netherlands awarded him with the Emmius medal for scientific accomplishments and he was named a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher by the University of Maryland
| Speaker/Presentation | Time in CET | Time in EST |
| Dr. Hedda Martina Šola Chair Introduction |
16:00 - 16:10 | 10:00 - 10:10 |
| Prof. Michel Wedel ViASNet: A Video Ad Saliency Network for Predicting Dynamic Saliency and Viewer Engagement |
16:10 - 16:30 |
10:10 - 10:30 |
| Dr. Hedda Martina Šola Seen or Said? Eye Tracking the Bio-Label at the Moment of Choice |
16:30 - 16:50 | 10:30 - 10:50 |
| Q&A | 16:50 - 17:05 | 10:50 - 11:05 |
| Dr. Hedda Marina Šola Closing of Webinar |
17:05 - 17:10 | 11:05 - 11:10 |
This is a FREE webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information on how to join the webinar. Registrations with academic institutional email addresses will be prioritized.
Certificates of attendance will be delivered to those who attend the live webinar.
Can't attend? Register anyway, and we'll let you know when the recording is available to watch.
Register for free here!
Eye Tracking in the Age of AI: Explainability, Prediction, and Applications
Guest Editors: Dr. Hedda Martina Šola and Prof. Dr. Jasenka Gajdoš Kljusurić
Deadline for Manuscript Submission: 20 November 2026
